On the Jewish Adoption of 'Marx' from Mordechai

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Secret Alias
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Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

On the Jewish Adoption of 'Marx' from Mordechai

Post by Secret Alias »

> Now in none of this can I come out with Mordechai as a kinnui for
> Marx. And that is the source of my confusion. All of the sources
> I have looked at suggest that Marx has a Roman origin.

Of course, _Marcus_ is a Latin name. But just as Latin _Benedict_
(French _Bendit_) can be a kinnui of _Baruch_, _Marcus_ or the shortened
variant _Marx_ can be a kinnui (of type 2) for _Mordechai_ (not the
other way round).

In his book "Die Familiennamen der Juden in Deutschland", Gerhard Kessler
lists the following German-sounding equivalents of _Mordechai_:

Mark, Markus, Markuse, Markusy, Markmann, Marx

In his "Dictionary of Jewish Names", Kaganoff says under MARKS:

Jews with a Hebrew name of Moshe or Mordechai often selected
Marcus or Mark as the non-Hebrew name.

I'm sure that the Guggenheimers say the same thing (I was able to
get their dictionary of Jewish family names by inter-library loan
but had to return it; it's a very valuable source for kinnuim.)

There is also documentary of this kinnui-equivalence, for example
in Jacob Jacobson's index of Jewish marriages in Berlin (Juedische
Trauungen in Berlin 1759-1813, Berlin: de Gruyter 1968). There,
_Marcus_ occurs very frequently as a kinnui of _Mordechai_, and
one Mordechai ben Zwi Mirels who died in 1654 in Vienna was also
known as *Marx* Fraenkel.
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